I understand Magik’s old teammate Karma is responsible for bringing your cast together in Dead Souls. What can you tell us about your take on the character and her role in the book?

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Yeah, Karma puts the whole thing together. Ever since Marjorie Liu’s excellent run on Astonishing X-Men, Karma has been the heir to and head of The Hatchi Corporation, which is a global mega corporation not much different from the Stark or Rand Corporations. But Karma grew up as a New Mutant herself, she knows what teams like that can mean for the world. So, while she is effectively retired from field duty, she has assembled a group of old teammates and friends to start a new team. Essentially she is taking on the Professor Xavier role. And like Xavier, Karma’s mission statement and end goals for her team may not be entirely clear from the start. She is on a quest for something, but we don’t necessarily know what that is at first, and neither does the team.

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Rounding out your cast of original New Mutants is Wolfsbane who was last seen in Tian during the Secret Empire event. How did that experience impact her? What’s your sense of Rahne Sinclair’s personality and what drives her?

Rahne has had a rough couple of years. She has always been sort of entry point for readers in a lot of ways. Even though she’s fully a member of the team, she’s a small town girl from a foreign country, religious, not comfortable with her powers. She brings a real outside perspective even when she’s been ‘inside’ for so long.

I think she’s a good counterpoint to Magik in some ways. Whereas the metaphor of Magik’s armor forming around her when things get tough is obvious, for Rahne it is the opposite. Instead of being sealed away inside, this part of her that she doesn’t love having exposed comes out. Thankfully I think she’s well past being afraid and ashamed of who she is, but just on a personal level, her transformations, turning into something people view as a monster, it’s very tough.

I think there is a world where what has happened to Rahne recently takes her out of this life once and for all. I like to think of her living in the Scottish countryside and just being happy with the quiet life. But this is her friends called into action once again. And she is really the bridge between all of them in some ways. From her time with the New Mutants to X-Factor, she knows them all well. So she is there for them. But I think people are going to find a quieter, more subdued Rahne in this series as she tries to reflect on some of the traumas in her life. One big one will be addressed for sure.